Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your website into an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is add fresh content on a regular basis to automatically start driving web traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this article, we discuss the configuration phase of this process. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured to ensure that web traffic will automatically start flowing when you publish content to your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With competition becoming progressively tougher businesses are looking for every advantage available to increase their competitiveness online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage. An expertly configured WordPress site gives your business a significant competitive advantage from the word “go”.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s one way to understand the key difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does it take additional labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
To illustrate this point here’s a joke.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Everything was going fine in the widget-making plant when all machinery suddenly came to a complete stop.
No one could figure out what went wrong and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately headed to the control box. After staring silently at the wiring diagrams for 5 minutes, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny little hammer from his pocket and made a very gentle tap near the top-right side of the box.
Immediately, the machines returned once again to normal.
The floor manager was greatly overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager received a service bill for $5,000.
The factory manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why the expert had charged them such a ludicrous fee for less than 5 minutes work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving new visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the factory stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to get paid fairly for investing years building up the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your blog configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other online properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
While the solution to many challenges is often ridiculously easy in hindsight, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to work things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring some basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which services you need to set up to get desired results
- Which settings you need to configure to make sure everything will function as you have imagined, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite involved and time-consuming. This is because it’s not as simple as installing a piece of software, tweaking some settings in your admin area or clicking on a button or two … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web hosting server, your site, and a number of external sites or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram of all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these steps in more detail.
Web Server Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings and options in your web server that affect how your website will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web-hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your business may attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwanted traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like configuring server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites and services.
External Web Properties & Accounts – Configuration
The basic concept of choosing external sites is that all of your content will get posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it will be automatically distributed to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After adding these external services to your traffic system, content with links pointing back to your website will get automatically posted to search, social and aggregator sites. Your website will receive additional exposure online, helping you tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some third-party sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your settings to save time and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts before configuring your WordPress site’s settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with essential information, tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your account with Google, this information can be used to automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, your account code can be added to all of your pages in WordPress via plugins used with other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account and site details are set up, use this information with traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers users the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your traffic system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your social media accounts before you can integrate these with your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and drive new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and pages set up with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with and post your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick those that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools (we will review some of these tools in greater detail during the Automation phase).
(There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your website.
There are various platforms that can be incorporated into your traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
WordPress – Global Settings
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services section
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section displays only one entry …
(Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(You can notify dozens of update services automatically!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading
This section affects how your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site to read the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to automatically ping various update services whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion
Although the settings in this section are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs linked to from your posts, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings Section)
The examples below show some of the ways post permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
To learn more about setting up permalinks, see this step-by-step tutorial: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO Using Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No website is completely safe from cyber-attacks.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
To learn more, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(WP Plugins For SEO – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your site’s SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to find, crawl and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site with WordPress plugins.
Most social share plugins allow you to choose which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress Traffic Theme Features – Configuration
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, many themes also include options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Other Areas To Configure For Increased Traffic
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic system configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of business online, you need to make sure that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
For a detailed article on why it’s important to have a compliant website, go here:
Post Categories And Tags
WordPress categories & tags help search engines classify and index your website, which helps you get more traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your pages.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your site’s post tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Stage.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s categories and tags have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Add A Site Map
A site map that lists all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications find your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although Google will index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – Don’t Lose Traffic!
When visitors enter the wrong URL or click on a dead link, they are presented with a 404 Not Found page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your website or blog has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do to generate more traffic is publish great content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many web developers a long time to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is addressed in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section 3
To keep reading this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive tutorial series designed to help business owners learn how to grow their business online and drive traffic automatically using a WordPress website or blog and proven online marketing strategies.
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